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2014 – Our Year With Less

What a wonderful year it’s been. We’ve had such a fantastic time doing our Year Without Supermarkets and we are grateful for all of your support. We could do a review of the year but somehow we feel more excited to look forward rather than back.

As you all know we finished our no supermarket challenge nearly two months ago and have perhaps even shocked ourselves by the fact that we still haven’t been into a supermarket. We can now safely say this is a way of life for us. However after much careful thought and two months of pondering what we could do next we are finally ready to share it with you our loyal readers. May we firstly apologise as somehow we feel a little like you have been in a blog holding pen, waiting for us to come up with something new and exciting. Well after much thought we think we have.

Believe us we have racked our brains for an all singing all dancing challenge and nothing seemed to come and then it smacked us in the face like a wet Sainsbury’s bag. Giving up supermarkets has changed our shopping habits and as a consequence changed our lives for the better. It’s helped us to see the ‘ordinary miracles’. So we thought that in 2014 our challenge would be to apply non supermarket logic to the rest of our lives. This means lots of changes and challenges big and small that will ultimately keep us on this path which seems to be enabling us to be happy. We guess in many ways its a leap of faith that decluttering our lives like we have decluttered our shopping bags will enable us to be even more happy with what we have. This is quite possibly making no sense at all but we hope you will stick with us for the next part of the journey.

So…….. what does this journey include?

Well lots of mini series about all sorts of things to essentially make our lives simpler and even more lovely. We plan to start with a spot of decluttering, some more kindness challenges, of course recipes and crafts with the odd thoughtful thought. Basically we are carrying on with what we do best which is just being Team Pugh, the supermarket free family who believe that kindness and contentment are the roads to ultimate happiness. We’d love you to come along for the ride and we hope along the way to continue to entertain you and maybe even share some thoughtful thoughts that might just change things for you too.

So welcome to 2014 and what we are calling ‘Our Year with Less’ and ‘Our Second Year Without Supermarkets’.

Oh and keeping watching this space for new and exciting things to come who knows you might even need to visit us at a different web address?

PS – No supermarkets were visited during the making of this blog in 2013, long may this continue.

this is a very appealing project as I will be 80 in 2014, I live alone, but with adult children nearby. I am thinking about the future, and the day may come (very soon!) when I will pop my clogs and they will be left with the unpleasant task of clearing my house of possessions. With this in mind I need to buckle down and declutter drastically. Any helpful advice would be welcome! Happy New Year to you all, regards, Patricia

I think decluttering might be a good one for us all, make the most of what we have and live our lives as fully as we can. Thank you for a wonderful blogging “supermarket-less” year and I look forward to all your ideas in the future. Long may you be happy Family Pugh. I wish you all you would wish for yourselves and your families in 2014.🎉👏

Dcluttering I’ve a mountain to get through, I’ve been helping my ex to clear his dear old aunties house it’s taken us ages a bit at a time. It got us thinking we must do the same. I’ve taken loads of stuff to charity shops and I’ve still a mountain of stuff to sort, it’s hard to let go

Well done for 2013 challenges.Look forward to seeing how the blog evolves in ’14. Politics? How about a voice of reason. If the powers that be could take up some of your ideas it might well be the answer to the debt crisis. Who knows.Many blessings to Team Pugh in 2014.

Yay Team Pugh! This sounds like a brilliant plan. Im determined to do a spot of decluttering myself this year (tho I live with a hoarder so dont think its gonna be very easy). Ive seen challenges on the web to ‘let go of 2014 things in 2014’, but know I couldnt get that far, so am setting myself the challenge of 500 things to let go of this year. Everything I look at is being loked at with the ‘will we take this to New Zealand’ question in mind, which is making it much easier to let go of stuff.
Im really looking forward to seeing what you get up to in 2014 and heres hoping its a wonderful one for you.
Jo x

I’ve really been enjoying your blog, even though I’m not quite ready to try living supermarket-less just yet. Looking forward to hearing about your TV-free month, as I know I am watching too much TV at the moment!

Definately need to up the decluttering and sorting here as well, I find with the 4 kids I spend so much time just keeping on top of things that the cupboards and storage ie. things out of sight, keep building up so a big sort is on the cards for us in 2014.
I think you also mentioned growing some food yourselves, we love GYO. Last year from about March to well now haven’t bought any salad leaves as we grew them in either an unheated greenhouse or out in the garden. I find the cut and come again type is so easy and grows so fast. From about July through to early Septemeber we had all the tomatos and cucumbers for our salads as well.

Beans are good value both cost and space wise, if you like runner beans they produce huge amounts and you can save some seed at the end of the year so never have to buy seeds again.

In the spirit of avoiding supermarkets and big companies I think you will find even local stores only sell seeds from the “big boys”, so you may be better looking at small scale producers like real seeds, using heritage varieties you can save seeds for future years. Herbs I have found are pretty easy to grow and propagate or save seeds from.

We find the *ahem* waste from the chickens along with the bedding, goes in a compost bin and makes brilliant compost/mulches for the next year, full of food for all those veggies. We also let the chickies free range over any empty beds during the winter, they dig up, clear any slugs/eggs/weeds and “manure” as they go. Only trouble is if they manage to pull down the netting and get on the brassica bed as ours did this year, lots of half pecked brussel sprouts lol.

We have tried our hand at a bit of grow your own but we must confess that Becksie’s dad is a professional gardener so reap the benefits of grow your own without the work – we have a deal where we swap it for homemade cakes hehe. That said we do a bit here too.

Sounds like you are fab at it – a very satisfying achievement and great to see where you food comes from

Sounds a great arrangement I have to admit to being a baking fan myself as well lol, mind you growing stuff can be pretty addictive. You never quite get over that little thrill when a seed you plant starts to sprout. Just making plans/buying seed for the year ahead now :).